Hi Narayan, Wheatbix, Houbsi, guys, :-) ABOUT COMMUNICATIONS AND SHARED GOALS ============================================
I just spent an hour and a half talking to Houbsi on Skype, and it was a very interesting discussion. Narayan, you and I have also had a couple of long voice chats. Maybe this is a good time for me to share some thoughts and ideas about things. @Houbsi: I understand your ideas for the interface of the LibreOffice software, and for the libreoffice.org site, and I really encourage you to go forward and explore them with the Design team. Also, talk to leading people in the l10n area of the project, such as Sophie Gautier, about the ideas and principles behind localization in the LibreOffice project. @Narayan: I understand very well your thoughts and attitudes about involving that talented graphic designer contact of yours. I also see the need to someone to work closely with us on graphics and page presentation. But, this is an OS project, and I don't think it can be achieved in quite the manner you envision. We have to remember that developing the libreoffice.org site is very much a cooperative effort between design contributors and content contributors, and that we need to keep Design in the loop about things. @Houbsi & Narayan: I've listened to your ideas about design approaches, with wireframes, etc, and I understand. Speaking personally, I don't really agree with your ideas about having a minimum of content on the libreoffice.org pages and most of the substance on the wiki. But, I definitely encourage you to expand on your thoughts and ideas on your wiki user pages, and to do modelling work on the pumbaa sandbox. You can count on me for any help you want me to give you. But, for the moment, the website has been developed in a certain direction, and I'd like to guide it through to a concluded state: development of the "Why?" pages, the "Features" section and the "About Us" section. At that time, LibO will have a decent website to fulfill needs for the next few months, and those of you with those radically-different, imaginative, creative visions can develop them at leisure for presentation to the SC and community. I'll be pleased to contribute in any way you want me to. One of the most difficult things in a project like this is communications. Even with the best will in the world, and even with the aid of tools like email, wikis, IM and voice chats, ideas often fail to pass effectively and we don't end up at a general consensus. Compromise and flexibility is needed from all of us. A great deal of contributing to an OS project like this lies in understanding and coming to terms with the project's sociology. Everyone wants the project to go forward - but often in different directions! There comes a time when we have to choose one path and then all contribute to it. My humble proposal is this: I've played a leading role in *dragging* the website in one particular direction. It was something that *had* to be done at that time, IMHO. I'm not saying it's necessarily the best, but it's already 80% on the road to its destination. I suggest that we complete that work, so that the site is really in a final v1.0 state. Then, I suggest that we thoroughly explore all other possible options via confcalls, wiki writing and modeling on the pumbaa server until we arrive at a v2.0 SilverStripe website to offer to the SC for approval - something tangible, backed-up by written presentations and proposals. I know very well that the subject of Drupal is not gone from the minds of several of you. Therefore, I suggest that, when libreoffice.org v1.0 is at a finalized state, we should request the SC to request Christian to set-up a Drupal sandbox on the pumbaa server, in parallel to the SilverStripe sandbox. That way, you could thoroughly explore your ideas, and could experiment and model, and build properly-working demos that can be shown to the SC, for consideration, for whatever applications you imagine. Personally, I'd see this as a platform for progressively developing things for a possible mid-term adoption - in 6 to 9 months time - if the results are judged to have merit and real added-value for the project. That's my 2 cents... But what about the immediate work to be done now? WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE? SOME PROPOSALS ================================================ For the "Why?" pages, I like Wheatbix's idea of concrete usage examples for each marketing target category, and - speaking my own view - I feel we should work on that. Me, I want to start by re-working "Why for Home?" in that direction. But I'd see these as being quite in-depth pages of maybe 500 words or more each. For the "Features" section, I see a set of sub-pages for each of the key apps, providing deeper coverage of key features and functionalities of that app. For instance, for Writer, styles, would be one. For Base, we'd need deeper individual coverage of table design, query design, form design and report design. And so on. We'd also need coverage of some of the great global functionality of LibreOffice available in all the apps: macros and templates, for instance. The "About Us" section (I'm not sure if that is really the best name for it) needs developing with content and pages about the community and the governance. Some pages that come to mind, for me, are "Credits", "LGPL license" and "Community Bylaws" (the latter needs discussing with the SC first). We also need a page with LibO-related, user-downloadable graphics, avatars and icons for people to use on their blogs and sites. Personally, I'd like to see that page directly on the site, rather than on the wiki. However, that supposes a thorough validation of the graphics beforehand by Design. I'm certain that there's other interesting content we can have in the "About Us" section that I haven't even thought of yet. Ideas needed. Most of those pages are forcibly going to contain quite a bit of text, and will need a lot of collaboration with Ivan and Christoph. Houbsi, as you suggested, maybe we can get Paulo involved with graphic production, too? Personally, I don't like the idea of burying content deeper in the IA than necessary, nor of sending the visitor off the site to the wiki (except for particular, frequently-updated content). Every additional click is a risk of losing the surfer's attention. And the wiki is not a facility designed to market the product, it's an auxiliary information base and a brain-storming area. Telling your visitors to go read information there is like a store's staff telling their customers to go have a root around in the store's stockroom and basement to see the products, rather than doing the presenting and selling on the shop floor! And, speaking personally, I think it's important to have plenty of written content on the site. Proper coverage of some subjects necessarily involves a certain amount of writing. If you don't provide the information, where can people find it? Many companies and products get a lot of in-depth technical coverage in the printed media and many other websites on the Internet. So they can afford to have sites that are light on content and that give mainly a superficial, visual UX, because the visitor comes to the site with a lot of pre-seeded knowledge of the product(s). But LibreOffice cannot count on that. The LibreOffice site is the key source of knowledge and information about the LibreOffice product and community. We don't have continual, collateral, reliable media coverage to educate people about the project. So all the info has to be there on our site, to enlighten new visitors/users, and to dispell incorrect perceptions and misinformation. That's why, in my *humble* opinion, we *do* need a certain amount of "text, text, text". :-D However, we really need to get Ivan or other Design team guy closely involved in working on the presentation of the existing pages and text (some slight adaptations will undoubtedly be necessary). We need graphics, and widespread use of the photo-shuffler. If possible, I'd like Ivan to get actively involved in working on re-presenting many pages. The "New Features" page is an urgent case. NEWS SECTION =============== One other thing I've been agitating for recently is a News section on the site. This would be a place to publish regular articles, and would involve close cooperation with Marketing. We'd need to evaluate a choice between the SilverStripe blogging and news modules on pumbaa, and then ask Christian to provide it on the main libreoffice.org site. CONCLUSION ============ Ideas, reactions and suggestions? And how about some volunteers to take on specific work? David Nelson -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to [email protected] List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/www/website/ *** All posts to this list are publicly archived for eternity ***
